Time (Embodied): Final Project

Throughout my life, I have always questioned others and myself why do we sleep and how does sleeping work? I never answered my question and because of this project, it was the best opportunity to propose this topic. I decided to study sleep analysis and focus on the movement of sleep (waves).After watching some of Carl Jung’s film, he inspired me to do more research on dreams.

In the beginning of the research process, I wasn’t sure how to approach the idea of my “object” and it took me a very long time to figure out the accurate way to represent my object. From my perspective, I learn quicker from tangible things therefore, I came up with the idea of solutions in clear glass jars. Seeing visuals is common in the class but I wanted to learn more from holding and observing the object when presenting the idea. Due to research, there are several stages that people go through during their sleep. Stages from one to four and REM stage. The first and second stages are light sleep stages, then the third and fourth stages are deep sleep stages. After a certain amount of time, we go into REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. Although there were just a few stages, each stage had its own functionality. In order to present the stages inside a jar was definitely a challenge. I started an illustration of the jar and played with the different positions that the jar could stand in order to portray the stages. The first jar, I mixed black ink with water then added glow sticks inside because it represented the darkness when eyes are closed but still have running thoughts in your head. This was the first stage, when you slowly fall into light sleep where you are easily woken. The second jar had light blue food colouring to symbolize dreamy feel, I added corn oil and sparkles to balance the movement of the water (the sparkles indicate the small dreams).

Once the jar is moved, the consistency of it moved in a slow and fluent direction. From this movement, it well represents the delta waves during a person’s sleep.